


Colossus

by sporeshroom



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Cannibalism, Discussions of death, Gen, Parasitism, have some uhhhh bees and wasps, lot of changing the names of places to indicate pre-hallownest and post hallownest, not a fix it, with regard to the husk hives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26616133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporeshroom/pseuds/sporeshroom
Summary: Under threat, it had always been the Hive’s way to counter by growing too large to conquer.
Relationships: Hive Knight & Hive Queen Vespa (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. Egg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are four stages in the wasp life cycle which works out great bc ive got four chapters planned for this. unfortunately, this does mean ch1 is just titled 'egg'

When Vespa was young, and very new to the world— when her whole world was within the Hive— her sister stood taller than the gods in her eyes, and stronger too.

When she was little still, Maud would take her hands and spin her around, lifting her off the ground like she was flying without her wings. They would climb up, out of the Hive, and Maud would take her climbing and exploring through the ravine above. She always climbed below Vespa, and always walked ahead.

She cleaved through hoppers with her nail, and popped the underbellies of the aspids flitting around when any got too close. A gift from Maud’s older sister, who was now gone from the world, that nail had been. No other could replace it, and Maud kept it well— saved it from use with her spikes and sharp claws, when she could. She would set her spike traps and show Vespa to spot and avoid them.

Vespa did not stay little for very long; the Old Queen still had time left, but Vespa had been chosen from birth to replace her. So she grew, soon to almost equal Maud in height, though her sister left her behind still in strength. She did not mind. Maud was in the ravine as often as she was within the walls of the hive now, training with her nail. It was only natural her strength would grow. She would no longer smuggle her out of the Hive, but Maud still climbed after Vespa when she followed her up into those ancient cave systems, though this happened less and less as Vespa grew. She had more to learn within the Hive, from the ageing queen. It was in this time that she met her future knight. Whether Melitto had been intended as a knight from the moment he arrived in the Hive, or whether it had been her influence that determined his future, she never found out. He didn’t tell her, and she didn’t ask.

She trailed after him around the Hive, and listened to him hum as he built up the walls.

When Vespa fought, it had been with a nail, the same as her elder sister. Melitto took up training with a needle instead, and so she started to train with one too, eager to share something with her dearest friend.

When Vespa started to climb out of the ravine again, it was no longer to find Maud—for she was gone, out to the world.

“Find your way back to us.” Vespa had sighed. Maud was going to slip out without a word, but she had come to wish her younger sister farewell.

Maud grinned. “By the Light at the world’s Crown,” she had promised.

Then it was Melitto following Vespa out, every time, and it began to be him walking in front of her, needle drawn, rather than Maud with her nail and spike traps.

In that time, Vespa climbed below. Vespa could not stand the idea that Melitto might fall where she could not catch him. She would protect him as Maud had protected her, and she would continue to do so even if there was never any sign of trouble.

After months of silence from Maud, as she travelled the world above, the Old Queen brought back the champion of the Hive. She would teach Vespa further in the ways of the nail, and the ways of the world.

“I had always intended to teach you when I came back, pupa,” Maud whispered into the fur on her forehead, still just barely taller, still able to wrap her arms over Vespa’s shoulders when they hugged. “I was learning so much myself I didn’t know when I should break. I suppose this is as good a time as any.”

In the first few months of Maud’s return she stayed in the Hive most of the time, doting on the younger Hivelings, and leading Vespa through the honeycomb, avoiding hive guardians trying to keep track of the wayward heiress. Vespa would tug Maud into newly built passageways too small for the them, and they would laugh as the guardians gave up on trying to fit through the hallways, lest they become stuck.

When Maud moved from running Vespa through the Hive techniques, to trying to teach her everything she’d learned from outside the kingdom walls, she also began to cross blades with her. In this time, Vespa learned that Melitto, as her future knight, was also learning from the Hive’s champion, and insisted that her sister teach them both at once. So she did.

Maud, with the approval of the Old Queen, brought the both of them out of the Hive to continue their training, up over the ravine, past the glades where the moth tribe resided. She showed them the Blue Lake, sharing with them the source of the everlasting rain in the Weeping Midlands, that which made the heart of the land so treacherous for those with wings. It was this natural monument to serenity that separated the Hive from the Mantis Village, the distance fostering peace and mutual respect.

The sisters could have flown through the stretching expanse above the lake, but Melitto had no wings, and Vespa would not send him back. So they climb up through Crystal Peak, through the Unclaimed Crossroads, and down again.

The noxious vapours the Fungal Wastes were famous for had cleared out in recent years, but the air burned, pervasive, in their lungs. The flesh beneath Vespa’s shell stung, as if the toxicity had gone straight through her carapace completely.

The lower they climbed, the more the vapours dispersed, the poisonous gases rising through the caverns. Had they no wings, they could have bypassed most of the poisons completely, by going through the flooded caves under the Midlands. Fluke territory— but the flukes would have let them pass in peace. It was likely for the best that the rains prevented expansion from the winged forces on either side. Under threat, it had always been the Hive’s way to counter by growing too large to conquer. Lucky then that the rains prevented threat; peace was better than growth of that kind. Were the Hive to grow too large, it would eventually collapse under its own weight.

The mantises kept to themselves; safety in familiarity, safety in strength. In that regard, the Hive was similar— for that, there was a mutual respect. The future Hive Queen and the future Mantis Lords would grow and train side by side rather than face to face, and there would continue to be peace. Here there were no alliances, but there was trade, and there was trust. Honey for blades, poison for fungi; not the trust that one would take a nail for the other, but the trust that neither would be wielding that nail.

There were three mantises who would be lords. “There were fourteen before, fourteen who would try,” Maud whispered to Vespa in the tunnels outside the village, as they oriented themselves in the first few weeks of their stay. There was no guide and no escort— if they were to benefit from their stay, they needed to be strong enough to learn some things themselves. It was a freedom they were all glad for.

“Fourteen?” Vespa peeled a cap from a fungal colony. The walls seemed to glow from the light of the acid pools. In actuality, it was the acid pools that glow from the light of the plant life. Young mantis lord number two had told her that, though Vespa suspected that information may have fallen under 'guidance', which the little lordlings weren't meant to give. Idly, Vespa wondered what number she would have been in Maud's last visit.

“Best as I could tell. They would have proven not strong enough.” Maud came to stand over her shoulder.

Vespa dropped the mushroom cap into the fizzing acid, careful that none splashed up on her. “And where are they now?”

“Depends. Some to their partners, some to the spiders, others same as your fungus.” Claw on Vespa’s shoulder, they watched the acid spit and bubble around the debris, decomposing the decomposer, atom by atom. One last, large, acrid bubble swelled and popped, and the glowing waters were clear once more.

“Do you care?”

“In an abstract way, it’s sad. Objectively. But will you die in the honeycomb?” It was not really a subject change that Maud offered, so much as a reminder; death was a natural part of life, and a natural part of the Hive that outsiders would not recognise. How the mantises experienced death was not for others to know. Vespa chose to take it for one, anyways.

“Better than to die at the walls,” she completed the adage at a murmur. In the Hive, it was better that when you went, you went surrounded by something, than by nothing. “Isn’t that a bit outdated?”

“Maybe so, but I think I agree with the old saying. I, at least, would rather die surrounded by family, or friends.”

“Is it the business of the living to judge a death more acceptable based on who was present? It seems out of one’s control.” Vespa turned to look at her sister, and found she had gained the height advantage some time in their travels; now, she had to look down.

“If that’s how you interpret it, then it is not their business, no. I always thought it was more about recognising that death is not controllable— your own, or others. And a reassurance that the Hive will care for you if you pass within their walls,” Maud stepped back, and took a seat on some rocks a few metres from the acid deposit. “When death arrives, you can hope it will be painless, and surrounded by loved ones who will care for the deceased. Regardless, I did not know any of those prospective lords enough to feel subjectively. I could be sorry for it, but I don’t feel anything.”

Maud raked her claws through the gravel, revealing the clay soil beneath, and shifted the subject back. “And I don’t think it’s my place to feel anything for them either. The mantises live and die in a way unique and private to them. We will never understand that, or be part of it, as they will never be of the Hive.”

"Hmm," Vespa faced the acid. "We should head back.”

At night they slept wrapped up in fabrics, strung from the cavern roofs, as the mantises did. Vespa felt small again, as if she was still a pupa wrapped in her cocoon.

Melitto faced across from her, presence comforting every night. She had not seen him so much in her free time recently. One of the mantises from the village had been hovering around him as of late. He didn’t seem to mind.

The second little lordling had been coveting Vespa’s time. Their names, she thought, she should remember after all that time. Eldest, Middle, Youngest. Chytrid, Dramma, Sitic.

Dramma would send wind scythes her way, and Vespa would flit in to strike with her needle while she was focused on controlling the trajectory.

Later, Dramma would lead her up past the acid pools to where the edge of Fog Canyon began to bleed into the Fungal Wastes. They would peer up into the iridescent bubbles at the oomas and uomas drifting idly, almost indistinguishable from the iridescent bubbles emptying out pink mist when they inevitably popped. It was beautiful, unarguably, and foreign enough land to the both of them that they seemed to be on equal ground.

Vespa would speak, of the Ancient Ravine, of the Guiding Light at the crown of Crystal Peak, of the Hive and the honeycomb. Dramma dragged her claws through Vespa’s fur, and absorbed every word.

The future lord would speak too, of the shroomal people they shared the land with, of the barrier sealing the village from Deepnest, of her brothers and sister living in the village. As a Mantis Lord, she would grow apart from her siblings with time and separation; she had known this, but not realised, fully.

Vespa could listen, and understand, but not know this truly. She had many siblings, but the only one that meant anything was her elder sister. Had Vespa not been the heiress, she would have been an elder sister too someday.

Vespa grew in those years, closer in height to Dramma and the other future lords than to Maud or Melitto by the end of it.

And end it did, with a three against three trial by combat. It was a coronation that finished politely, with Maud and Melitto dropping out as Dramma and Sitic did. At the cue she found in the midst of the fight, Vespa ceded to Chytrid with grace. A symbolic victory to usher in the leadership of the new Mantis Lords, stepping out from under the old ones, while still acknowledging the strength of the Hive.

For Vespa it truly ended far more quietly, outside the village. Dramma strung a charm onto a chain, and hung it from her neck. Dramma’s Mark of Trust; it would grant immunity to most any poison, and allow Vespa to brave the Fungal Wastes even when the toxic vapours thickened again in the coming years, to the point of clouding the air.

In return, Vespa handed Dramma the jars and vials of honey that she had been coveting for this moment, and with them, the knowledge that Dramma had cared far more than she had. Even Vespa had not realised the extent of the disparity until that moment.

Guilt filled her like the fizzing acid in the rock pools around them, and she held Dramma’s hands in her own, and brought them to her mouth. _There was something she had wanted to make for he_ r, Vespa promised, _but she could not do so outside of the Hive_.

Dramma smiled wide, and didn’t call out what they both knew to be a lie.

Vespa did not see Melitto speak to the man he had seemed to spend so much time with. He didn't tell her, and she didn’t ask.

They arrived back at the Hive to much fanfare; her training and travel complete, Vespa was to officially become queen. She stood twice as tall as any Hive Guardian by then, but still so, so small to the Old Queen. She would rule under her guidance for the short remainder of the Old Queen’s life, and then would have to burn away the shadow she had been buried under.

A tall shadow it was, she thought, as the Old Queen’s body was removed, bit by bit, from the centre of the Hive to be returned to the Cycle. A heavy shadow, too. The Old Queen had lived a great many years, and had watched the world grow and change. Truly, for Hive Queen Vespa to be even a footnote in the Hive’s history would be adequate, in light of the last queens rule.

It was her time then, to act as the beating heart of the Hive.

Something was moving far, far in the distance. Something larger than Hive Queen Vespa. Much, much larger than the Hive. Larger maybe even, than the Weeping Midlands— that infinitely stretching cavern at the world’s heart would be the only place with even a chance to hold the weight of this thing.

A threat, then.

To protect the Hive, always. The Hive would grow large enough to quell this threat, were it possible. Vespa would need to be enough to lead the Hive then.

And so she started to grow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vespa means wasp so yes I just stole scientific words from the wikipedia page to make hive names
> 
> melitto like melittosphex burmensis, one of the oldest species of bees,  
> "Melitta is a form of the Greek word μέλισσα (melissa), "honey bee",[2] while Sphex is a transliteration of the Greek word σφήξ, wasp" according to wikipedia at least. so yeah honey bee named after the honey bee wasp
> 
> im falseknight on tumblr


	2. Larva

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> melitto finally gets dialogue 😩😖 king
> 
> also i updated the tags, mind them
> 
> also just added some art and minor changes

Already Hive Queen Vespa was a large bug, beginning to be taller than most caverns outside of the Hive, but she needed to be strong enough to protect and to defend.

Years stretched out, and every day the ground shook, and dust dislodged from the cavern ceilings. No one knew what was to arrive, or when, only that something eventually would.

In this time, Hive Queen Vespa completed her return gift to the second Mantis Lord. Hiveblood, counterpart to the Mark of Trust, which would recognise the wearer as a part of the Hive. It was a gift that only a Hive Queen could give, but not one that should be given. Once again, Vespa misjudged; last time, too little; this time, too much. The charm never was delivered.

In this time, Maud left once more to the upper world, never satisfied with feeling complacent. Her position as champion fell away like a moulted shell with the Old Queen’s death, and she took her loss of routine and responsibilities as a chance to train and prepare, in her own way, for when that distant threat arrived.

In this time, the next generation of prospective Mantis Lords made the journey to train under the Hive. Nine of them arrived, to be trained by Hive Knight Melitto— an official title now, rather than assumed. It will not be quite like the last generation; the Hive has no Heiress, for Hive Queen Vespa is still practically a larval queen, in the first stages of her life and reign.

For this, Vespa felt no different than she was when she was undergoing her training. No older, or wiser, though time had passed— enough that Dramma and the other Mantis Lords were preparingreplacements. Enough that Hivelings hatched after her were in the final phases of their lives, to pass on soon. She knew each of the Hive, as they all knew her, but she hadn’t paid any personal attention, aside from her sister and her knight. When they passed all of the Hive would respect, but very few would know to celebrate their life for them.

When a Queen passed, the festival for her life would stretch for weeks or months, dependant on the length of her reign, or how long it took to remove her body. These were usually indicative of each other. The Old Queen’s celebrations had spanned almost a year, at the very start of Hive Queen Vespa’s rule. It was, in part, a show of strength to allow them last so long when an ever-present threat grew day by day.

But in all her reign she had yet to consider just how long she would rule, how long she would be alive. A Hive Queen, when accepted by the Hive, became their pinnacle and pride; their protector deity. Not a god, but close. Vespa was not as the Guiding Light the moths orbited at the height of world, nor as the swirling, lashing oil that seeped up through the dirt and soaked the lower layers of the Hive in the dark season, nor as the reaching, coiling branches threaded through the canyon rock above.

There were some like her, but few. Even in that earlier time, very few bugs could prosper so much as to grow into a gargantuan state as a Hive Queen was almost guaranteed to.

So Vespa would not live forever, but she would live for a large enough fraction of it to be significant. She would likely live longer than anyone she would ever meet. She would outlive her sister, and even with her knight’s lifespan tied to hers, it would not be unnatural for her to outlive him too. And that knowledge had not settled for her until she stood, watching eight tiny mantis lordlings bow for the last time.

Only one had not made it, and unless their numbers were culled further by the long trip back, they would rule as eight. Vespa did think, briefly, about entrusting Hiveblood to those future lords, to return with it to the Fungal Wastes, but it would be an insult when her gifted charm specifically allowed her to travel there unharmed. Many reasons why Hiveblood was a gift that couldn’t be given.

She would not think again on it for a long time, for it was not long until that looming date.

Hive Queen Vespa would venture out of the Hive herself, when the grinding of the earth was almost too loud to bear, for a nailsmith had made his forge outside the Hive. He was not intruding into their walls, and his was a valuable service, so she had no qualms with this. Rather, she had heard of his quality of work, and would commission a blade for herself, as if she could cut down this threat with nail, needle or claw.

The Nailsmith, she was charmed to find, had lived long enough to grow also. A sign of talent, and strength, to do well enough to have the energy and safety for growth.

In return for his work, he would always find safety with the Hive. They would not eat him, even if he did enter their walls.

_It was not really a fair trade off, as he hardly left his forge at all_ , Melitto had said.

_His life’s destination was to forge a pure nail, and the rest of it seemed to revolve around that goal_ , she would reply.

_I understand what it is to live like that, I think_ , her knight told her, from where he sat near her neck. She cradled him close to her face, for she knew.

The day the threat arrived was deafening. Vespa found herself in the upper regions of the Hive, overseeing workers rebuilding the walls, and clearing debris as it continued to crash down from the canyon above. Every rock seemed to scream and grind and shift, like it was the work of a tectonic shift, and not a living, breathing creature.

There was silence, all at once, followed by more earth falling from above, for the threat may have settled, but the world had yet to follow suit.

It is only later that the Hive realises the full extent of what had happened to them that day. Later, when workers from the upper layers venture down to find the Hive completed bisected, the lower layers completely blocked off by armoured, plated shell. A Wyrm had crawled up around their kingdom, and died.

Humming and singing, the ever-present buzzing, and the echoes and thuds of the Hive walls were ever-present. Silence in the Hive would be indicative of something truly terrible. But even still, no quiet would be found in the Hive at all in the aftermath.

The brood chambers in the deep Hive were lost, trapped and crushed under this corpse, and those oil and shade soaked Hiveling’s mourned the loss the greatest.

The corpse that had become the floor was razor sharp, and flash freeze cold to the touch. The workers poured wax over the skin, trapping the ash that had already begun to flake from it in a resin cast. They built up the floor from there.

It covered the bone deep wound caused to them that day, not allowing for the loss to be understood, but also not allowing the flesh to fester.

A Wyrm. A Wyrm had made their world its bed. This was the first, and certainly not least, of the damages this being would cause to the world.

Briefly, Vespa wonders to their other neighbours, now cut off so cleanly from the world; how would the void fare without them, or they without it?

It was later still, that the changes this Wyrm would make to the world if it could come to light. Later, when the bug who still glowed bright as he did as a Wyrm, would stand at the world’s weeping heart, dwarfed by the crowd drawn to his light, and declare himself King of the World. King of Hallownest.

Vespa would wonder then, just how deeply he could damage this world’s balance. She recognised the bugs around him as the type to trickle down through that world from the surface, and from outside; belonging to none of the civilisations, and exploring until they found satisfaction or death. That sort of bug wandered occasionally into the Hive, and were given places as a walking brood, or officially ‘caretaker’. They were fed up on Hive honey until the Hivelings growing in the nests wrapped around their bodies chewed their way out through the flesh. The bug was welcome until then; a parasite on the Hive, as they were a parasite on it.

Some knew what would come to pass as a Hive Brood, but they were kept safe within the Hive, for no outside bug to ever learn of their existence or fate. But if one brood saw the end of another and discovered what was to happen, it was only inevitable.

And that was the sort of crowd this king would weave around his fragile mortal shell. Clever of him, to unite those with no former prospects, and nothing to guide them but themselves. Clever again, to form pacts and relationships soon as possible, with a civilisation still off-kilter from the presence of a god, so as to bind them into an unfavourable position for as long as they remain alive. And this new king would try it, no doubt.

But Vespa was clever still too, sharper than this new king’s crown, with actions twice as pointed.

She approached this new king, who would stand on Fluke land and call it his own, with demands and threats wrapped in offers. She towered over this little king’s tiny new shell ( _grown_ , she wondered, _or stolen?_ ), and in turn he glowed even brighter, almost difficult to look at. Hive Queen Vespa could see why so many bugs had swarmed to him, when they had nothing else for themselves. But she had her place already, and this pale king’s needle thin laser light was far too narrow to blind her in all four eyes at once.

Maybe if he had been prepared for her visit— maybe if he hadn’t shed his corpse in the centre of her home, to become just god flesh and bug shell— maybe then, he could have caught her off guard, could have blinded her so thoroughly as he had his followers. But she had grown so large to overwhelm her enemies, and to never face immediate threat ever again, and it was so obvious he hadn’t anticipated anything like her existing.

Higher Beings, he planned for, and anything mortal he must have thought he would surely sway and blind.

_At the very beginnings of his reign, the Wyrm’s beacon was at its brightest. He dragged the moths down from their place at the world’s Crown, and placed them in his orbit. In turn, the Guiding Light seemed to dull without witness. The Hive still knew of her existence, and still sought her light until she was too dim to find, but they were not of her, and could not sustain her as she had been. By this time, Vespa knew; he would leave behind far more wreckage as a bug than he ever could as a Wyrm._

Hive Queen Vespa blocked all light entering the king’s town from the canyon. Melitto stood in front, needle not drawn, but visible.

Little Hivelings sealed the gaps in the opening with their buzzing bodies in between hers and the walls. No small part of them hummed, little shadows shaking under their skin as if to burst their exoskeletons open. The king’s glow worm pride flared, and glinted off the slick wet rock walls.

Hive Queen Vespa left with an ‘alliance’ between this new kingdom and hers.

This civilisation seemed to be a new and terrible thing that she could only watch grow too strong for everyone else, and then too strong for itself, until its inevitable collapse.

What had become of the flukes, to allow this? Any number of things maybe, but it wasn’t something that she would ever know. Had the Hive been at their strength she would have considered just eradicating this disruption before it did her any harm. Perhaps that was the point of cutting the nearest kingdom in half.

So she and the king had what was really just a promise. Essentially, he would never expand into, harm, or inhibit the movements of the Hive. And in return, she would not crush his weak shell where he stood.

For this civilisation would grow, she knew, but it had not grown yet. The Hive, while wildly destroyed, still had the advantage of numbers, strength, and organisation. Though they could not go into the rain, the hive mind would still flatten his king’s little rallied forces were they ever to step out, and Vespa would do everything in her power to end his reign before it could truly begin. So there was an ‘alliance’, between the Hive and what would be the kingdom of Hallownest.

A wall was built in so little time, Hallownest’s workers tirelessly closing any entrance to the ravine from the cavern, bar one official path, far above the Hive. _Good_.

It was in the years after that Hive Queen Vespa saw former Hive Champion Maud again.

When the Pale King’s name was known by almost all, and the dead skin flaking off a tossed out shell is as much part of the ravine as the rocks and the walls, bodies began to rain down from far above, and Maud came home.

So small, she seemed then, sitting on Vespa’s furred shoulder. Vespa had built herself in her sister’s image, to be strong and self determined. Though she had not been there for most of Vespa’s life, she had been there when she was needed.

“It is good to see you back,” Vespa murmured, her strong voice still travelling the length of the room.

Maud placed a hand on Vespa’s face. “I’m afraid it is not for long. You know I was never satisfied being here?”

“I know. You never were happy to stay or to return.” Vespa breathed gently, familiar with how easily a bug could be dislodged from her, and well practiced in accomodating. She offered an open hand to her sister.

Maud stepped down into her palm, and Vespa brought her to her face. “I have found somewhere I will stay.”

“And you will be happy?”

Maud didn’t seem to be breathing, Vespa noticed faintly. Fear or excitement for her future? Surely the latter. Surely not fear of her little sister. “I will, yes.” Maud flittered a few feet off her palm, and landed again. _Nerves or anticipation?_

“Good, then.”

“I will be gone soon. But I have something to show you first,” Maud told her, and she darted down to the floor where she had earlier placed something cloth-wrapped. “I am to be a champion again, and I intend to guard my title for as long as I wish to stay,” and she unwrapped the item hugged to her chest, and tilted the bone white full face mask so that Vespa could see it better. Four holes for eyes, each on one side. It would fit her well, but it ached too bone deep to name, to see something so obviously a manufacture of Hallownest, cradled to Maud’s chest like pale larvae.

“Four eyes. We will match,” was what she said, for Maud had been searching since before Vespa hatched, scraping at the world, desperately trying to carve herself out a space. It would seem she had finally found it, under the Pale King’s searchlight.

"I came to leave my name with the Hive Queen. It is not something for the outer world."

Vespa sighed, for she had known it was coming. Maud never visited, but she at least knew to say goodbye.

"Then you will never return." The finality rings true; it is not a question. "The Hive reclaims your life. Maud has died. And you will be given every chance an outsider has to escape."

As soon as the last syllable was out, the little wasp was gone from the Hive Queen's Hall, tearing out through the honeycomb labyrinth faster than anything. Vespa began to hum, louder and louder as the echoes compounded through the tunnels. Her song drew the Hivelings from the walls to attend her audience.

"There is an intruder in the Hive. They have not stolen anything, and there is no need to chase beyond the walls. Defend the Hive." Every tunnel swarmed with soldiers, guardians, and Hivelings. Even Hive Queen Vespa's smallest offspring shook from the walls to hunt.

But the Queen knew the intruder wasp would be long gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mauds name is from me smashing together the words mud dauber, which is the type of wasp she is
> 
> there is estimated to be over 100 000 observed species of wasps in the world and only a couple thousand of these are social. its hard to find an exact number because a lot of sources say different things. still, the vast vast majority of wasps are solitary! same goes for bees (abt 90% are solitary). only the vespidae family of wasps has social species.
> 
> mud daubers are solitary wasps


End file.
